Pages

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Chris Hedges and Dinesh D'Souza Debate American Power

This is a little challenging for me to listen to - when D'Souza spouts his conservative Christian dogma my skin crawls . . . right off my body and hides in the closet. But I'm sure conservatives feel the same way when Hedges speaks.

The real topic of the debate is the "film" D'Souza made, which is supposed to be about Obama, 2016: Obama’s America (currently at a 30% level among critics on Rotten Tomatoes), which has been described by Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman as:

“an
outrageously unsubstantiated act of character assassination,” which
espouses “the standard right-wing argument that Obama has always been
out to hide what a radical he is,” and the “underlying message is that
Obama is a stranger, a man you “don’t know,” a refugee from another
land, another culture,” and that “[d]eep down, he’s an angry Third World
upstart just like his father.”

The story and links are courtesy of Utne Reader. Below the article, I have posted the original article from Uprising.

This morning, KPFK, a
listener-sponsored Pacifica
radio station in Los Angeles hosted a debate between Chris Hedges and Dinesh D’Souza. The
debate is moderated by Sonali Kolhatkar, host of the KPFK show Uprising and author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence.
Hedges
and D’Souza touch on the War on Terror, the Arab Spring, and the 2012
election,
among other topics. Both authors have been fiercely critical of U.S.
foreign policy and the Obama administration, but for very different
reasons. You can listen to the full hour-long debate below, courtesy of
KPFK.

About the Speakers

Chris Hedges is a
journalist and author, who spent nearly 20 years as a war correspondent in
Latin America, the Balkans, and the Middle East.
In 2002, he was part of a team of reporters at the New York Times who received the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of
global terrorism. He is the author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and Death of the Liberal Class. His latest book, Days
of Destruction, Days of Revolt, was coauthored with artist Joe Sacco, and
describes inequality and poverty in 21st century America. Hedges
is currently a senior fellow at the Nation Institute and writes a weekly column for TruthDig.

Dinesh D’Souza is a New York Times bestselling author, filmmaker, and
president of King’s College in New
York City. A vocal critic of the Obama administration,
D’Souza served as a policy advisor to Ronald Reagan before moving on to
fellowships at the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution. Since
then, he has debated with Michael Shermer and Christopher Hitchens, and authored
several books defending conservative Christian values. D’Souza is the director
of a new film called 2016: Obama’s America, which appeared this summer and has already grossed close to $30 million. The film is based on D'Souza's 2010 book, The Roots of Obama's Rage.

Listen to the entire programTimed
for release in the thick of the 2012 presidential campaign season, a
new film called 2016: Obama’s America has hit 2000 theater screens
nationwide and earned an estimated $30 million to become a box-office
success. The film is based on the best-selling book by conservative
commentator, Dinesh D’Souza, called The Roots of Obama’s Rage, and
produced by Gerald R. Molen, who has been a producer for such Academy
award winning films as Schindler’s List and Rain Man. The Hollywood
Reporter called it “perhaps the most popular conservative doc of all
time.” 2016: Obama’s America questions President Obama’s allegiance to
the United States and makes inferences from Obama’s 1995 memoir, Dreams
from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

Since it first screened at a theater in Houston in July, the
low-budget documentary was heavily promoted by Houston-based
conservative talk show host, Michael Berry after which it spread by word
of mouth and opened in even more theaters locally and then nationally.
2016: Obama’s America has since been endorsed by Glenn Beck, Rupert
Murdoch and others. In fact Murdoch tweeted the following after watching
the film: “Truly scary if no answer. Every voter should see and decide
for self what future they want for America.”

But Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman has called the film “an
outrageously unsubstantiated act of character assassination,” which
espouses “the standard right-wing argument that Obama has always been
out to hide what a radical he is,” and the “underlying message is that
Obama is a stranger, a man you “don’t know,” a refugee from another
land, another culture,” and that “[d]eep down, he’s an angry Third World
upstart just like his father.”

President Obama’s reelection campaign has also responded, calling the
film “nothing more than an insidious attempt to dishonestly smear the
President by giving intellectual cover to the worst in subterranean
conspiracy theories and false, partisan attacks.”